frost elemental – Body Painting by Cat

Traditional Christmas Fairy Body Paint

January 25, 2014January 27, 2014 by BodypaintingbyCat, posted in Body Paint, Uncategorized

Dec 2011

I’m lucky enough to get quite a few models and photographers contacting me hoping to work together, and do sometimes arrange a shoot with some of them. Emily I’d painted as a bronze statue for the Paintopia promo shots, and she was keen to get painted again.

Alex Burlingham was still in school and planned to do photography at Higher Education, but the portfolio she sent me was already really interesting.

We arranged to meet up at her house where she had an actual studio set-up, impressive for a school pupil. Once Emily was in big pants and the bra inserts I prfer to glue on (they are huge and cover the whole breast so no naughty bits show), I’d found a traditionally-decorated Christmas Bauble I liked as inspiration,

and to carry on from the glitter-blowing Frost Fae shoot, had got some fake ‘snow’ that you added water to. It puffed up, looked fairly realistic, and was dry to the touch.

This was my favourite Grimas dark red/ burgundy over gold Mehron/ Graftobian powder and matching mix.

A fun afternoon, thanks ladies! And good luck in your career Alex.

Merry Alt Christmas Body Paint fairy card

January 25, 2014January 27, 2014 by BodypaintingbyCat, posted in Body Paint, Glitter Tattoos

BRAVE Leonie let us shoot this on a day of sleet in Mid-Dec 2011, in a Norwich graveyard!

She contacted me as she knew I was in Norwich, and she was going to be up visiting friends. We’d met when she was being painted beside me at several body art events, by other artists.

Al Pulford, a local who specialises in photographing gigs, had been in contact with me before and this was a great chance to collaborate.

I decided there are ‘rules’ to my seasonal fae shots; the twiggy gem sprays I made for the first Frost Fae shoot have to be included in some form with every model. So, this time I curled the wires and beads around some twigs from a hedge that still had a few shrivelled rowan etc berries on them and put them into Leonie’s hair.

She also wore another pair of the large bikni inserts as breats overs, and I cut the side strings off a pair of bikini knikers which I glued onto her.

I worked mainly with Grimas paints, and added some subtle lacy snowflake effects with some home-made stencils.

I then hand painted some twiggy black lines and glitter tattoo-d over the top of them.

We did the inital shoot in Al’s house, where I’d painted, and as we finished, looking out at the snow, he said….”There’s a great graveyard just down the road’. And Leonie was keen!

I’d bought my big felted Star Wars (I got it where they shot Tattooine in Tunisia) claok with me, so swathed in that and her boots, brave Leonie trotted down the road in the sleet with us.

I’m glad she did – what a trooper! It was actually snowing so much we did most of these photos under large sheltering trees, with me dashing up with cloak bewteen shots. Thanks guys!

Frost Fairy Body paint Winter Fae

January 25, 2014January 27, 2014 by BodypaintingbyCat, posted in Body Paint, Face Painting, Glitter Tattoos

Nov 2011

This was another shoot with photographer Al Hone, who stepped in last-minute to help me out over the summer when I had a postal comp I needed bodypaint photos for.

Mel is a friend of his who was coming up to Norwich to do another shoot with him, and fancied being painted too. Al could get his work’s photo studio so we were sorted!

I had an idea of continuing the vaguely Elemental series (started last slow season – i.e. last winter – with several glitter tattoo shoots – Leafy/Earth. Bubbly, Fire…) which morphed into an ‘Elemental Fae’ theme. I had a new pair of extra-long fairy ears I wanted to use, and got lost in Flikr/ google images of frost, snow etc for hours. Not that I could paint half of those patterns – you’d need a fractal mind!

The day before the shoot, amusing my toddler Finley for an hour in Norwich, I spotted a bead shop. A handful of crystal & plastic beads later, I had an idea of what to do for her headdress as I’m so rubbish with hair. After Fin went to bed I spent the evening wiring and coiling wires to crystal drops, and created some heat-bonded fibre fabrics too……

On Sat we all met at Al’s office studio, and I glued Mel into the breast shields I had chopped into sort of icy-crystal patterns. I mainly used Diamond FX metallic blue/ pink/ purple as a base, with Grimas White. I did her front as she was sat on my tall chair, then her legs and back.

She had a dizzy spell so chilled (literally) on the floor for a bit which meant I switched to mainly decorating her front & upper body for the time we had left when we got going again.

She then sat so I could attach all the bits into a high bun on her head…am so chuffed with the way the accessories came out in the photos – don’t the fibre fabrics I made look weird and icy?

After the paint I added some freehand glitter tattoo glue, waited for it to dry and added the glitter.

We then had a bit of fun getting Mel to blow around assorted colours of glitter….

%d bloggers like this: